The Papers. What are they?

Ostensibly they are a group of papers that purport to introduce humanity to "religion of the spirit"--in contrast to the "religions of authority" as presently practiced by mankind.

The remarkable thing about these Papers is that many who study them have concluded that: "If they are not true then surely they ought to be." Others have been impressed by the extraordinary quality of the thoughts they present, typically remarking that, "no human being has ever written like this," or that the ethics, aesthetics and concepts of deity they present are, "out of this world"--and way beyond the capacity of any previous authors.

So regardless of the conclusions an individual may make about the Papers' authorship, or how narrow that individual's religious (or non-religious) beliefs may be, there is probably no human being on earth who could not gain some benefit from studying them seriously.

However the pace of modern life is such that many believe they have no time available to indulge themselves with a single 2000-page book. Hence this condensed version of key information from the Papers is reduced by about 100-fold so that those so pressed for time might know that there is much more to life and living than material gain or fame.

Who wrote them and why?

Their authors offer these Papers as if they are being presented by celestial beings having a charter to present a detailed account, comprehensible to finite beings with our level of knowledge and intellect, that includes the reasons for our existence, and details of our universe careers that would eventually reach its climax with our "attaining" of the Universal Father in Paradise, plus a description of the celestial environment and the spirit beings we would meet during our pilgrim journey.

Undoubtedly this would be a difficult task but one made more difficult by the necessity to comply with universe rules on revelation that includes the proscription against provision of any unearned knowledge. Nevertheless the authors were still required to offer a unified concept framework by which ordinary mortals might comprehend their now-commencing universe career that includes their graduation to spirit life and their journey to Paradise.

Imagine being instructed, in the early part of the last century, to provide a native population from the mountains of New Guinea or from the deep forests of the Amazon with a comprehensible understanding of the operation of the New York stock exchange and how it works, but with a strict ban on presenting any "unearned knowledge!" That would appear to be a reasonable analogy with what faced the Urantia Papers' authors.

The Papers first began to make their presence known in the 1910 to 1934 period. Because of the mandate requirements, much of the cosmology they provided is now outdated. However the mandate also provided for the premature release of vital missing information and, indeed, some of the cosmology was highly prophetic when offered--and some still is. One of the effects of this prophetic material was to generate fundamentalism among many readers, but also confusion because of the soon appearing outdatedness of some of their cosmology.

The apparently unnecessary inclusion of "soon to be outdated" material may also have been virtually unavoidable in order to comply with other strict rules concerning human free will, as discussed below.

According to the Papers, our present life is preparatory. Ideally we progress from what is essentially a nature that is dominated by inherited, animal-origin instincts specifically adapted to a "survival of the fittest" environment, to one that sets aside these primitive instincts in undertaking an idealistic spiritual type of life offered to God in conformity to his will. Ideally it is a life for soul building in which material values are slowly replaced by those having spiritual value. Nothing material or purely of material value participates in soul building. Neither do such values pass on with the soul to the next phase of our universe career. Experiences, beliefs, thoughts, events, actions, or whatever it is that constitutes our life must have genuine spiritual value in order to participate in the building of our souls.

The limitations imposed by human free will.

The Papers state that God has decreed the absolute sovereignty of human free will. Our entry into God's "kingdom" is to be had "only by believing, by simple and sincere faith."

Human societies operate on the principle of reward and punishment, reward for doing "right;" punishment for doing "wrong." Human religions have embraced this principle, even transferring the concept onto their anthropomorphic Gods who become both our judges and executioners.

Taken to a logical extreme, and so as not to violate the sovereignty of human free will, a decision to seek to "become one with the Father" and "to always seek to do God's will" must be one that is undertaken in the complete absence of duress. It must be a faith decision made without fear of punishment or the expectation of special reward. At this level of the freedom of our will, even the decisive proof of the existence of God would contravene the absolute sovereignty of that free will--for if we have certain knowledge of an all-powerful Creator, then surely we must ponder upon what such a Creator might requires from us--which automatically places us under some duress.

To understand this more deeply, test yourself sincerely with this question, "Would I still want to choose to live in God's way, as it was revealed in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, if decisive proof was put before me that there is no God?" If your answer is no, you may need to question whether your real motives are of an animalistic nature, whereas a yes answer indicates that God's way really has become your preferred option.

Another point that needs to be understood is that a true faith decision can only be made if there is some degree of uncertainty. The moment we have reason to believe, the moment we have empirical certainty, belief becomes logic, and no longer faith.

To comprehend why the Urantia Papers have been presented in such a strange manner, it does seem necessary to contemplate these apparently extreme attitudes of the consequences of God's decree of the absolute sovereignty of our free will.

Examples of this strangeness is the placing of the authors' mandate halfway through the Papers, long after many readers would be likely to reject them either because of errors discovered in their cosmology or because of the way they blithely present as historical, material that is probably parable, myth, or allegory that is being used to convey deeper meaning. But another reason for their strangeness may be that they have been written so as to be presentable to a vast range of intellectual awareness among their potential readers.

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About truth.

At the time these Papers came into being they were radically out of line with materialist philosophy, particularly of the Western world, and were way ahead of their time for their views on truth and proof. They tell us that, "the existence of God can never be proved by scientific experiment or by the pure reason of logical deduction," and, "in the mortal state nothing can be proved absolutely." They comment: "Both science and religion are predicated on assumptions," and they are written in a manner consistent with the authors having intimate knowledge of the discoveries of logicians such as Kurt Godel and Paul Cohen about the fallacy of mathematical proof (which is really the basis of all modes of proof). Further they were well aware of the strangeness of the quantum world, which is only now becoming part of public awareness. Truth, they tell us, is always relative, evolutionary, and progressive, but absolute truth is only ever available to deity.

Concluding comment.

The Urantia Papers painted a picture of the existence of universe upon universe upon universe at a  time when the Milky Way galaxy was thought to be the whole universe. They gave the age of the solar system correctly as four and one half billion years when Hubble's data concluded the age of the whole universe was less than half of that. Their cosmology embraced continental drift when all prominent western geologists held it as an anathema. But over and above those relative trivialities, they painted a detailed picture of mankind's long ascent to God, the reasons for our current apparently lowly nature, the uniqueness of our relationship with the indwelling spirit of the Father himself, the purpose of our present universe career, and the role we will play in the ages upon ages to come that will follow after the perfecting of the present inhabited universes.

The reality of the indwelling spirit of God is one of the key concepts emphasized throughout the Papers. Well known to the early Christians, it is described in more than twenty verses of the New Testament, and especially in the letters of the apostles John and Paul, both of whom emphasized a further relationship available to the individual believer with the spirit of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth.

The Jewish people of Jesus' day enjoyed a well-established synagogue school system, attendance to which was compulsory for children. Hence illiteracy was rare among these people. They could read the epistles of Paul and the letters of John that made frequent mention of this special, continuing and direct relationship of the individual to God and to God's Son. Later the concept was lost as Christianity spread amongst the illiterate followed by the consequential development of a pastoral, intermediary role for the priesthood.

The direct access of the individual to Deity through their indwelling by Deity, along with the importance of this personal relationship, is a major feature in the teachings of the Urantia Papers.

Nothing like these Papers has ever been seen before. They constitute a believable journey into reality.